Bomb Calorimeter
by Wind-in-the-Sage
Summary: Carter had accomplices the night he blew up his high school, and they weren't exactly excited by the idea. Neither were parents, teachers, and officials of all sorts. But it was the accomplices that had the most lasting impression. Lasting enough for Carter to deny even being a chemist, let alone an explosives expert, when asked to teach LeBeau in S1E12 "The Scientist." SSSW 2019.


"Carter, you know chemistry."

Hogan, along with everyone else in Hogan's quarters planning how to bamboozle the inspecting German professor without the scientist that was to be inspected, looked at Carter. Never had a truer statement been spoken, but Hogan shouldn't know that.

Carter's eyes flew wide, realizing Hogan wanted him to go out there and impersonate an official, expert French rocket chemist in front of a military inspector, or at least make LeBeau look convincing with second hand information.

"I know what?"

~~HH~~

The morning sun shone down heavily on two young figures walking between the dusty wheat fields between the small farms on the edge of Bullfrog and the large, new building that was Rutherford B. Hayes Polytechnic High School.

One figure was a lanky, short-haired boy, who couldn't help but look awkward in his newfound height despite wearing his (now slightly ill-fitting) good school clothes and his mother's attempts at straightening his collar and hair. He was walking along carrying a small stack of school books in an uncharacteristically conscientious manner.

The other figure, a petite girl with a small nose, bright eyes, and pale yellow dress, was swinging her arms gently, free of her school books, looking out at the dirt road and brightening sky.

She walked and listened quietly while he animatedly explained what he'd found out about the school's new chemistry equipment.

"It's called a bomb calorimeter, but it's not actually a bomb. It measures the enthalpy of combustion, not calories like in food or in anything. Well, even if there's a relationship. In calorimetry, you combust something—a phase change—but you don't allow the volume to change so you have one less variable. So combustion with delta V of 0 means you put the inside under pressure and heat. So much pressure and heat that it wants to expand—really fast, so it's like an explosion—but the calorimeter keeps it contained and doesn't allow energy exchange with the surroundings. Get it?"

She squinted his direction, bright sun in her eyes. The expression on her face was probably due to that, though it may have been confusion or even a smile. She shook her head.

He took a deep breath and thought hard about how he could rephrase it. That was when an idea came to him. It immediately impressed him as a good one, even though it was only half formed coming out of his mouth. "Do you want me to show you?"

She looked from the farmhouse they were approaching back to him. "How?" she asked.

"Well," he swallowed in excitement as it started to come together. "Mr. Gund already lets me do extra work in the lab, right? And we're going to use calorimeters next week anyway, so maybe we could go to the lab after school and set up an experiment."

"Do you know how to use it?"

"Well I've read about these things, and I've made my own calorimeters at home. I mean—they were nothing like this one, but I know the concept and how it works. I could operate it." Andrew continued though he could see her looking behind him up the lane. "We could combust several things at once instead of one like in the lab, not letting them touch each other, just oxygen in the chamber, then we can run all the calculations and impress him and get ahead in chemistry and learn more things!" he finished.

"And skip a lab?" a boy said from behind him.

Andrew turned his head to see Pete Rawlings. Their classmate, despite the lack of care and money evident in his clothing, didn't look a bit awkward in his size. He was a tad taller than Andrew but gave the impression that he was shorter because of how stocky he was. The small eyes and cropped hair didn't make him less imposing.

Andrew scooted aside to give him space as they continued their walk to school. This was always his least favorite part of the day, somehow—aside from ending chemistry class—and he hadn't quite figured why. Andrew didn't like Pete necessarily, and didn't eat lunch or do schoolwork with him if he could help it, but really Andrew didn't hate him. Mary Jane never said anything.

"Um, yeah, maybe," he replied as soon as he got a handle on the mysterious sinking feeling that had comewiths Pete.

"So you want to do this calibration thing after school?" he verified.

Carter nodded hesitantly. "That's the idea. And it's a calorimeter."

"Yeah, whatever. I want to do it with you."

Andrew looked dubiously between Pete and Mary Jane. In explaining this, he'd been meaning to ask _her_. "Well, I do need help to do it," he said noncommittally, hoping Mary Jane might jump in even if Pete wanted in too. He'd much rather her help than his.

Thankfully, Mary Jane seemed to have caught on to his predicament and had mercy. "I'll do it," she offered.

With this, Andrew could face just about any other lab partner. "Okay!" he said brightly. "Then we can all do it together. Tomorrow after school. Tell your parents you'll be late, and bring your goggles."

~~HH~~

Tomorrow afternoon came, and Andrew's heart was pounding from his stalking about the halls, trying to avoid the janitor and lingering faculty on his way to the spacious, white, sharp-cornered chem lab. He had finally made it, dragging along a squirrely, bespectacled boy named John Coke, whom he had enlisted.

John was a rather nervous boy and it took some coaxing, but Andrew knew he would really feel much better if John were there. At the beginning of this year, the boys had found each other quickly. John knew a great deal about chemistry. Not as much as Andrew, of course, but certainly a lot for being a freshman. John being a year younger they didn't have lab together, but they tried not to let that stop them from talking electrochemistry and radioactive decay during lunch.

Andrew, seeing that John was staying about as far from the supplies closet as he could, gave him another assignment. "You keep a lookout for anyone coming."

John eyed the bottles Andrew was putting on the bench and he frowned ruefully. "Are you sure? This is _really_ off limits stuff, even for most of the seniors. And mixing it..."

"I want a two to three stoichiometric coefficient." Seeing in their faces that this was not entirely convincing to John or Mary Jane, Andrew strummed up his courage and let his excitement mask his worry at breaking rules. "Their products won't react at this temperature. It's fine," he said with all the confidence he could muster. And why not? He was perfectly capable of this.

Soon Mary Jane, then Pete, both arrived, the former with misgivings like to John's, though smaller. Andrew was glad he had Mary Jane and John here even if they were concerned. It would be fun yet. He just had to show them.

He took them through it with a guiding hand, making sure to explain the steps clearly. John described most of the chemistry of the reaction, and Mary Jane placed the ignition wire and poured the water, as she had the steadiest hand, while listening intently to John and Andrew's teaching. That left Pete to fetch the samples of combustibles from their bottles and cross his arms. Overall, it went smoothly and Andrew was enjoying himself, glad to be showing Mary Jane something so exciting, almost forgetting they weren't actually allowed to be in here.

The whole process didn't take long and would have taken less time if Andrew wasn't insistent on care. Soon they were nearing the end.

"Now get the oxygen tank, Pete," Andrew ordered. "I've got to find some funnel or something to pipe it in."

Pete grumbled and when he came back, asked, in slight irritation "Are we done?"

"Yep," confirmed John, looking relieved as Mary Jane finished and closed the lid of the calorimeter.

Pete began packing his goggles into his bookbag. "So what do we do to show Mr. Gund that we finished his lab?"

"Oh. We're not that done," Andrew said. "Now we leave it alone."

Pete straightened. "What?"

"Well, it'll take about a day to fully combust if my calculations are right. Longer than usual, but I want to make sure we get as much data as possible. I'll take two temperature measurements. Between classes tomorrow and when we finish," Andrew said as he flushed the chamber with oxygen from a tank and made sure the calorimeter was closed and set.

Pete sighed. "Come _on._"

"Some things are slow in chemistry," Andrew explained apologetically though _he _didn't see why it was a problem.

"Most things are slow," John added informatively.

He was acting like he had most of the time they'd been preparing the reaction. It didn't seem that he wanted to be here, but that didn't make a lot of sense. He was here, wasn't he? He was probably just impatient to see the results. Andrew knew he always was. It was like waiting overnight for something in a pastry recipe to cool in the icebox.

Regardless, they all packed up neatly and left the school through the kitchen door with plans to meet tomorrow evening to "help each other with their chemistry homework."

But as soon as Andrew left the room and the experiment, hidden in the supply closet where Mr. Gund shouldn't see it running, he acquired a funny feeling in his stomach that didn't go away when he got home, or ate dinner, or had a decent night's rest. And it only became worse throughout the next day.

~~HH~~

All the next day during chemistry, he couldn't help but look at the closet across the room, the feeling in his stomach still nagging him. It made it difficult to focus on his titration. First, he'd read the instructions wrong and used the weak molarity of sodium hydroxide which was meant for rinsing the equipment to titrate instead. Then he'd forgotten to get fresh acid, which threw off their volume calculations. By the time he'd forgotten the phenolphthalein altogether, Gloria, his lab partner, who was generally a patient girl that he worked well with, seemed to be getting upset with him.

"You leave out the indicator and we're never going to see when it turns neutral!" she scolded.

He sheepishly opened his mouth to apologize while releasing the buret from the ring stand to go empty it again, but didn't get to apologize before he heard a faint pop and hiss from the direction of the closet. Andrew's eyes flew to the door.

"Andrew, what's the matter? **You look like you've just seen a ghost.**" She didn't seem to have heard it, but Mr. Gund did. "What's wrong with you? Why do you keep looking over there?"

"**Sorry. I only answer two questions at a time,**" he said distractedly, not present enough to realize how strange it sounded. Then he looked down at the buret in one hand and beaker in the other.

Before Mr. Gund could open the door or turn around and find Andrew looking as guilty as all of Alcatraz, he tripped, and smashed the beaker of dilute hydrochloric acid against the floor, saving the buret but making sure to spill the sodium hydroxide too.

He was saved the trouble of yelling for attention because Gloria and the pair of girls next to him all shrieked, calling exactly the amount of attention needed to distract Mr. Gund. Now he could focus on getting clear of the spill. He pulled himself up from his knees, already feeling the burn of acid and base deeply. So _this_ was why they wore gloves.

He was smiling as the shower pounded down on him, able to momentarily forget the blame piling up against him. He had always wanted to do this but was too careful during lab for this reason exactly: "Why do I let you do half the things I do?" Mr. Gund said wearily. "I've seen you in the hallways."

Andrew just smiled.

~~HH~~

The fiasco made it difficult to convince his mother to leave the house again to study chemistry of all things, and it made him feel bad to think of the deceiving he was doing, going back for something even more dangerous—an unsupervised experiment using contraband chemicals and hefty equipment that had most probably gone wrong—but he knew better than anyone else what was going on with the experiment and therefore how to clean it up, or fix it, or whatever he had to do.

In the end, his mother was indulgent, knowing how much he loved chemistry. It was the reason they'd saved enough to send Andrew to Hayes. She cleaned and bandaged him thoroughly, making sure he got a good scolding and a big meal before allowing him to go.

He had been kept back long enough that he arrived at school just as John did. They ran into each other at the kitchen door, which they knew was always open in case of night deliveries.

"John! I forgot you guys were coming," Andrew exclaimed.

John stopped with the door halfway open and a greeting halfway out of his mouth. "Why? Or more to the point, how?"

Andrew suddenly realized John didn't know about the noise from the supply closet and quickly determined now was not the time to tell him. He might need help fixing it and he didn't want John to turn tail and run, especially since he now realized that Mary Jane and Pete were coming too.

"Umm, just forgetful, I guess. Come on. Let's go see how it turned out." A hint of false cheer in his voice was enough for John and they snuck silently from the cafeteria to the stairwell and down the eerily dark second floor hallway to the lab. There was not a sound in the school. He had expected at least someone in the office or gymnasium, but he supposed everyone wanted to be home on a Friday night.

Just as Andrew was clicking open the door—

"Boo!"

Andrew and John both jumped.

"Pete?"

He was smirking. "Gotcha. Now let's go see about this Callie-meter." He pushed past them, which seemed surprisingly easy to Andrew.

"Calorimeter. And let's not. Or at least, me first, I need to tell you—"

He had made it to the supply closet in a few strides, and stopped. "Is that what it's supposed to do?"

Even Pete could tell. Andrew started explaining before he could push his way past to see. "I didn't have the chance to tell you guys, but Mr. Gund didn't see, I don't think, and—" He stopped on beholding the sight before them. The calorimeter, tucked in the corner by the cleaning supplies, was dripping chemicals from its still-closed lid.

He heard a gasp from John. "Those chemicals we already so off-limits! They're going to know exactly what happened!"

Andrew wasted no time in rushing over to assess the damage. He kneeled by the machine and nearly reached out to turn it. He jerkily stopped himself. "John, get me some gloves."

"Wait, did it break?" Pete said. There was a rising tension in his voice Andrew tried to ignore for his own sanity. He unplugged the calorimeter and grabbed the 409 to see if it would get the mixture off the floor, hoping the tile could stand up to corrosives.

"John, gloves!"

John whined in the back of his throat and rushed out.

"You messed it up?" Pete was still in the stage of disbelief, which was nevertheless rapidly turning to anger. Andrew didn't hear the footsteps that heralded their next visitor.

"Sorry I'm late, I—" Mary Jane gasped. "What happened?"

"He broke the new machine," declared Pete. Andrew ignored him, still scrubbing the floor.

"How? What happened?" she asked, voice becoming shrill.

"I'll see when John gets back," he murmured.

In response, a pair of gloves was shoved into his face. He tugged them on, listening to John's nervous mumbling. "I knew this was a bad idea. I knew we shouldn't do it. This is why we're not allowed!"

Andrew placed his hands on either side, discovering dismally that the drips had hardened. He turned the calorimeter and groaned internally. The control panel was busted and the chemical concoction was leaking out at all the seams. The panel must have been the weak part. He was only thankful that it slowly released and didn't blow up like it's namesake and destroy a lot more. Still, this machine was probably the single most expensive object in this school. Except for the school itself, of course. That had to be more expensive. He didn't know how much more—

"Oh no," Mary Jane said softly. He turned around to see the others, allowing them a better view of the completely destroyed equipment. Mary Jane looked a bit stricken, but was keeping her head much better than John, who was twitching as if ready to sprint, and Pete, who was crossing his arms, his eyes beginning to smolder. Andrew felt small crouched on the floor. The blame gnawed at him, easily ten times worse than when he had blown a hole in the kitchen table. Panic spurred his mind on.

"Look, I have an idea, okay? We'll just make this into a simple explosion. Less to explain, less to get in trouble for."

Mary Jane considered, but before she or John could say anything, Pete had decided.

"No. We're not doing it. Don't listen to him."

Andrew was a bit startled. "Why?" asked Mary Jane.

"**He had that same look on his face the other night when he got us into this mess.**"

Andrew jumped to his defense, feeling more guilt as his solution was discarded. "What? What do you mean? No. I'll get us out of this. At least partially. It'll be okay, alright?"

"No, it won't be okay," intoned John in a wobbly voice. "That thing is destroyed, and you told us how much it costs. I'm out of here. Do whatever you want." He ran quickly for the door and that was that. Carter didn't expect much else. He'd never really found anyone very loyal except for Mary Jane.

"_This_," Pete pointed, "is all _your_ fault."

Andrew stood. "But—I mean, we did everything right, and if we just explain—"

"Explaining will get us in more trouble." Andrew felt like he was desperately trying to get out of a checkmate.

"Look, we'll destroy the calorimeter. We just spilled something dangerous while using something perfectly harmless over the calorimeter. It'll be an accident." In the back of his mind, he couldn't believe he was suggesting this, and if it we're just him, he would have 'fessed up, but other people were involved and at this moment he would do anything to make things less his fault.

He began to pull together some fairly explosive, fairly permissible chemicals. "Mary Jane, you should go. I'll take care of this."

"Do you... need help?" She sounded scared and it touched Andrew's heart. She _was_ loyal.

"No, it's fine. You should go." He stopped in his busyness to wait till she made a move toward the door. After a pause and a doubtful look back at him she nodded and went to leave. "Thanks for helping!" Andrew called out after her.

She stopped to peek back in through the door. "You're welcome, Andrew."

Andrew sighed unknowingly, hands full of random bottles, looking at the vacated doorway.

"Alright, lover boy." Andrew turned in surprise at Pete still being here and some consternation, ready to object. Simultaneously, he kicked back into high gear to prepare an "accident" for the bomb calorimeter. He stopped after one step as he saw the look in Pete's eyes. "You may have scared them off, but I know someone's going down for this, and someone's sure to rat on me."

In all honesty, when Andrew didn't particularly like someone, they really were a bad sort by anyone else's standards. Andrew, whose good nature had held Pete as trustworthy all this time, nevertheless could smell danger (whether real or exaggerated) a mile away. He put his bottles on the bench.

"We can just fix this and get away with a scolding or suspension," Andrew reasoned, ignoring the bit about ratting Pete out. Andrew wasn't going to tell on him. He might have because it was his duty and he should tell the truth, but Pete wasn't really a part of it; it was Andrew's idea. And anyway, they all knew John was already going to spill the beans.

"I can't afford another suspension, but I sure know I'm getting one. And I'm not going down alone. You'll probably get off easy, teacher's pet, but I want some retribution."

Andrew was frankly amazed at the large word from Pete's mouth, but had little time to marvel.

Andrew had never been bullied before. Not in any way, or at least none that succeeded in hurting his feelings. Most everyone liked him just fine and anything meant to be hurtful Andrew quickly forgave because of his naivety or good nature. No one had ever punched him before. Brothers and cousins had, but they never hurt, and Andrew had always spent more time fishing or playing soldier or doing chemistry experiments than he had play fighting with his cousins. Now experiencing it, he didn't like getting beat up, and he didn't like that he couldn't fight back. Pete was big and strong and Andrew simply wasn't.

It didn't last long. Pete stopped hitting and left, Andrew's urging to stop apparently getting through, though far too late for Andrew's liking.

The young boy, now all alone in the darkened lab, drew his sleeve across his mouth and inspected it to see if he had a busted lip. He'd seen it in a movie once, the one he'd ever been to. But all he found was that it was extra tender around his eye and on his cheekbone, and he felt a little sick in his stomach. He sat up, not caring to move further, exhaled, and looked at the bright supply closet. Inside he could see the usually tantalizing shelves he was never allowed to freely peruse, and the remains of a glorious new instrument and a shameful display of an experiment gone wrong. His fear at the blame of the others, at the wrath of his mother, at the distrust of Mr. Gund, all seemed far away at this moment.

He was just mad. At Pete for hurting him. At himself for getting them all into this trouble, for driving off John, for scaring Mary Jane, for getting the experiment wrong. Maybe if Pete hadn't been there, it would have gone right. He was doing the measuring after all.

His eyes took in the damage again. No. That was more than poor proportions, and Andrew had been watching anyway. Why did he think he could do this? He wasn't a real chemist. He couldn't even seem to follow rules put there for his own safety when it came to his excitement. And he knew half the reason his excitement had gotten the better of him was because the word "bomb" was in the name.

The blame he could put on himself was too much at the moment, and his smarting face didn't allow him to be very sympathetic. His anger focused more on Pete and boiled up. He had never felt like this before. On a deeper level that he wasn't quite aware of, he was afraid of the strength that anger came out with. So he kept his hands busy. He was going forward with his plan.

It didn't take much to stage. Andrew had had plenty of accidents in his career. He grabbed what he knew he'd need, pouring a few of the chemicals over the calorimeter, which he'd moved to the door and out of the way of any other bottles that could become possible reactants. Then he puzzled over the last bit. How to delay the last, most reactive powder in its touching the mix on the floor so he could get a safe distance away. After some hunting about the room, he settled on a kitchen timer. He removed the case and attached a string to the timer, which would pull a paper full of powder off of another bench.

When he had it all prepared, he took a moment of silence, partially to mourn the bomb calorimeter, and partially to quiet his nerves, beset with anger, sadness, excitement, and worry.

He carefully set the timer to fifteen minutes—the shortest length of time he could manage that would wind up enough string to pull the paper off the work table—and set it on the bench.

The timer started clicking.

He never could remember the next fifteen minutes very clearly. He knew he had left the chemistry room, possibly thinking he had heard someone and needed to hide the impending explosion. In any case, he knew he was thrown hard to the hallway floor when the explosion occurred, and then he remembered fine.

His ears rung. In shock, he was able to pick his head up and look in the direction of the explosion. The smoke and dust cleared first next to his feet. He coughed and squinted.

_**I can't even see the floor...** _he thought. Then, in horror,_ I don't think there_ is _a floor._ How could that be? It was only supposed to make their experiment unrecognizable, maybe put a dent in the floor. He realized he was being careless in his anger. He'd probably used too much reactant, read the label wrong, or—most likely—not thought to work out the half-reaction that had taken place within the calorimeter and how it would react with the rest, and had exploded the lab and everything in it. He was saved the trouble of worrying any further by a ventilation pipe, which had been swinging squeakily from the ceiling, if Andrew could have heard it, falling on his head.

They found him twenty minutes later, he was told, and the first thing he said was that he'd never get angry again. No one asked him about that, or about what he was doing alone at the school, or about paying for the damage, which Andrew was most scared of. He was spared the questions for a long time while he recovered and caught up in school at the small high school the other direction from his house. Apparently he had blown up a very large portion of the school, and it was closed for a month and a half as they repaired enough to bring students in again. He was miserable for awhile until Mary Jane talked him out of it. She was good at putting things in perspective. She was also his one consolation. He never told on the others, but Pete was always mean to him after, John was too skittish to talk with for a very long time, and people began to avoid him. Mary Jane never abandoned him, though.

He had never trusted himself after that. Sure he kept on with the chemistry—you couldn't keep him away from that—and he'd improved leaps and bounds, but he didn't tell anyone about it anymore. Not one of any friends he made, no one in the Air Corps, no one in authority, and definitely not Colonel Hogan, a newfound leader who'd taken him in and given him serious responsibility.

He had decided after that incident that his original dream of construction demolition would perhaps not be as good a career as a pharmacist. This was what he generally told anyone when they asked what he would do for a living, but he had been a little more embroiled in the hard and fast, uncontainable, inorganic reactions than any large-molecule organic pharmacist-type chemistry.

Which brought him to this moment, with everyone staring at him, less than a month into his stay at Stalag 13, pinning all their hopes on his relaying some knowledge of synthetic fuel to a French cook who had only used a lab for making crêpe suzette.

He passed it off quickly, claiming that his only experience in running a drugstore, which Hogan did know, was selling beach chairs and candy. For the sake of the mission, he offered his Handbook of Pharmacy, which was worn more from toting it about for two years than reading it.

He had successfully allayed suspicion of the extent of his chemical knowledge.

They wouldn't know. He wasn't the one for the job, and he wasn't ready to tell them. He didn't want to alienate the people he was working and living with, whom he felt would be good friends if only he didn't botch a job and land them all in front of a firing squad.


End file.
